Avid S6 v2.2 update

Published July 25, 2016

Few weeks ago Avid released the latest S6 upgrade which makes our control surfaces even more clever. I scanned the forums for information how stable it is, what new goodies we get, but haven’t been able to install it due to the enormous workload. As the old wisdom says: Never ever upgrade in the middle of a project.

So I patiently waited until the studio has a small pause so I can install the new upgrade.

Install

The install process is not complicated, however you have to be precise and keep the order or else you might experience some weird things. Go to the Avid site and log-in.

1. Download the necessary software from your Avid account. Don’t forget that you need an S6 update and also need a WS control upgrade for your computer. If you don’t find the downloadable file, search for them under the Products not yet downloaded section.

2. Copy the S6 upgrade software to a pen-drive.

3 On the S6, log-out into Administrator mode and launch the install file from your pen-drive. Obviously follow the steps until it’s ready but wait, you’re still not finished with the S6 part. You have to Activate the new software which means you need your system ID and the activation code.

4. Now you have two options. Activate online (only if your S6 is connected to the net) or do it offline. I did it offline which requires to go the Avid software activation site, fill in the form and download the activation file.

5. Once you’ve downloaded the file, copy it to your thumb drive and sit back in front of the S6. The software there asks for the activation file and as you show the path for that, you’re ready with the complete installation and activation process.

6. One thing left. Go to the surface menu and update the modules as the S6 asks for this. This, depending on the surface, may take a few minutes to finish.

7. Update the WS control software on your workstation.

8. For real World peace, restart both the S6 and the computer.

If you’re absolutely not familiar with the update process or find it difficult, you can find further help in the What’s new document, also available from your Avid account.

In practice

As we all know, it’s one thing that a new software should be bug-free and perfect in every area, but as these beast are so complex, bugs are just the reality of our professional life. Hence I always insist on testing the new release on myself before I upgrade the other studio. I’ve been testing the 2.2 software for 5 days now with smaller and bigger sessions and it is extremely solid. I haven’t experienced even one crash during this period.

Tried to make it break with huge film score mixes and dauntingly long 10 hour-long opera recordings but it just works like if I’d been using only a few channels.

One important note. This new version might render your old layouts unusable. Because there’s a new feature in this mode, you might need to redo some older session’s layout.

It seems that we’re lucky, every older layout works fine with the new software.

After the last few days I absolutely recommend every S6 owner to immediately upgrade to 2.2. Not only it is rock solid, but you got some very nice new features too, which I’m going to introduce in the next posts, so stay tuned.